Anti-violence rules in effect at L.A. cybercafes

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A new city law designed to prevent violence at cybercafes quietly took effect Saturday, but authorities had no inspections planned to check for compliance with the tighter rules.

The ordinance requires 30 parlors in Los Angeles to enforce a curfew for minors and install surveillance cameras. Police did not plan any immediate inspections, and one business owner said permits were not available yet.

"They said check back in a couple of months," said Lisa Woo-Rogers of Blue Screen Gaming.

Los Angeles is the largest of several Southern California cities to enact restrictions on Internet gaming parlors. The ordinance was proposed after several shootings in 2002 near cybercafes, two of them fatal.

A police analysis found that most of the people arrested at cybercafes were minors who violated curfew or truancy rules. Officials were concerned that the cafes were havens for gang activity.

Woo-Rogers described the new regulations as "pretty reasonable" and expected to spend about $2,000 to install cameras and obtain a permit.

"We're a cheap baby sitter," she said. "The kids are good here. They know who's in charge here. If they get out of line, they'll hear from us."

< I've got an idea, let's just implant rfid microchips in the kids bellybutton when they come in the door. It'll be tagged to the systems so they can't access sex or violence sites and games will stop operating for them when curfew time hits. Then all the people who aren't causing trouble won't have to be bothered. Then with new GPS capability in those chips, the parents will be able to logon to a city (or state) wide server and track the location of their kids. It would also be technologically feasable to create a system whereby they could send a signal which administers a mild shock through the device every 60 seconds (user configurable) until the child starts heading home, or alerts the authorities if they start going the opposite direction. >

Army: JetBlue Data Use Was Legal

An Army data-mining project that searched through JetBlue's passenger records and sensitive personal information from a data broker to pinpoint possible terrorists did not violate federal privacy law, according to an investigation by the Army's inspector general.

The inspector general's findings (PDF) were accepted by some, but critics say the report simply highlights the inability of the country's privacy laws to cope with 21st-century anti-terrorism efforts.

News of the Army project came to light in September 2003 when JetBlue admitted it had violated its privacy policy by turning over 5.1 million passenger records to Torch Concepts, an Alabama-based defense contractor.

Torch subsequently enhanced the JetBlue data with information about passengers' salaries, family size and Social Security numbers that it purchased from Acxiom, one of the country's largest data aggregators.

The Army says it was testing the data-mining technology as part of a plan to screen visitors to Army bases.

JetBlue, which turned over the data at the request of the Transportation Security Administration, was the first airline fingered for secretly sharing data with the government. But it is now known that six of the 10 largest airlines, along with two of the largest airline reservation centers, also did so.

The inspector general found Torch did not violate the Privacy Act, which prohibits government officials from creating secret databases that track information about American citizens by name and Social Security number. The report said the company didn't violate the law because no one looked up any passenger by name and its algorithm simply sifted through the data using factors such as home ownership, age and income in order to sort passengers into risk groups.

"The evidence indicated that Torch neither created nor maintained a system of records as defined by the Privacy Act of 1974," the report said. "There was no evidence that Torch retrieved individual records from the databases ... by name or by any other identifying particular at any time in the course of the study."

The report did find, however, that Torch violated the conditions of its subcontract by presenting the study's findings at a conference in April 2003, which later led to the public disclosure of the project.

The Army did not publicly release the June 21 report, though it provided copies to some senators in July and Wired News later obtained a heavily redacted version through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The committee's chairwoman, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), said she was "pleased to learn that there was no Privacy Act violation," but added she would continue to "closely monitor any further attempts by the government to obtain passenger data to ensure that the process ... complies with privacy laws and is sensitive to Americans' privacy interests."

However, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), who independently asked the Pentagon to investigate the Torch matter, sounded annoyed by the Army investigation's technical reading of the law.

"Neither the Army nor its subcontractor considered informing customers that their data would be used," Leahy said in a written statement. "TSA failed to identify the privacy policy and privacy impact on individuals. Yet both the Army and TSA were able to report that they technically did not violate the letter of the Privacy Act of 1974 because the personal data was collected from private sources and was never in the hands of the government," he said.

Leahy compared the Army's findings to those of Department of Homeland Security chief privacy officer Nuala O'Connor Kelly, whose February report (PDF) said TSA employees violated of the spirit of the Privacy Act by asking JetBlue to provide data.

Ari Schwartz, associate director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, thinks the report makes faulty assumptions about how Torch worked with the data and feels that the law was broken.

"They worked through all the holes in the definition of a system of records because this is a 2000 database with a 1970s regulation," he said. Schwartz said the definition of "system of records" needs to updated to include any database that contains sensitive information about individuals, not simply those in which records are retrieved by looking up a name or Social Security number.

Using the Army's definition, a system like the proposed Total Information Awareness system could search for patterns of terrorist activities within massive amounts of data and output the names and activities of suspected terrorists without needing to tell the public about the existence of the database, so long as analysts never search through records using anyone's name.

The report also indicates that the Army's ultimate goal was to use Torch's technology to predict future terrorist attacks. In 2002, the Army authorized Torch to access Los Alamos laboratory databases and counter-intelligence databases housed in the FBI, although it is unclear whether the company did so.

Even though the Army report concerns information revealed nine months ago and the government has since shelved plans for a new passenger profiling system because of privacy concerns, the report remains germane to ongoing debates about the balance between security and civil liberties, according to Schwartz.

"You look at the 9/11 commission report and there is all this stuff in there about transportation screening and there's another section on civil liberties and at some point, you have to map those two together to build a system that takes civil liberties into account." Schwartz said. "But if the response is completely 'We are going to do whatever we can to route around privacy laws,' you are going to end up with a lack of trust in the government to do their job, as well as in the companies who are asked to turn over data."

Leahy concurs that report's technical reading of the law highlights the challenges the government will face in trying to implement recommendations from the 9/11 commission.

"Effective information sharing and analysis can enhance our security capabilities," Leahy said. "As the 9/11 report recommended, we need to develop those capabilities, but it should not be done without due consideration for individual privacy.

Leahy said the government and private sectors need to be upfront with the public about the type of personal information that will be shared and tested, and about what protections are in place to protect privacy, prevent identity theft, ensure accuracy and protect civil liberties.

The Army report will not be the last word on the propriety of airline data transfers to the government as both the DHS' inspector general and its chief privacy officer, O'Connor Kelly, are currently probing the TSA's use of airline passenger data for its own projects.

The Call Is Cheap. The Wiretap Is Extra.

t first glance, it might seem like the simple extension of a standard tool in the fight against the bad guys.

But in fact, wiretapping Internet phones to monitor criminals and terrorists is costly and complex, and potentially a big burden on new businesses trying to sell the phone service.

Earlier this month, the Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to move forward with rules that would compel the businesses to make it possible for law enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on Internet calls.

But developing systems to wiretap calls that travel over high-speed data networks - a task that the companies are being asked to pay for - has caused executives and some lawmakers to worry that helping the police may stifle innovation and force the budding industry to alter its services. That requirement, they say, could undermine some of the reasons Internet phones are starting to become popular: lower cost and more flexible features.

The commission's preliminary decision, announced on Aug. 4, is a major step in the long process of deciding how Internet-based conversations could be monitored. Regulators will now hear three months of public testimony on the ruling. Few expect a resolution of the issue this year, but it is not hard to figure out who will ultimately pay for the wiretapping capability.

"All the costs carriers incur are ultimately going to be passed on to the consumer," said Tom Kershaw, vice president for voice-over-Internet services at VeriSign, which provides surveillance support for Internet phone companies.

Tapping Internet phones is far more complicated than listening in on traditional calls because the wiretapper has to isolate voice packets moving over the Internet from data and other information packets also traveling on the network.

While traditional calls are steady electronic voice signals sent over a dedicated wire, Internet calls move as data packets containing as little as a hundredth of a second of sound, or less than one syllable, which follow often-unpredictable paths before they are reassembled on the receiving end to form a conversation.

To make wiretapping possible, Internet phone companies would have to buy equipment and software as well as hire technicians, or contract with VeriSign or one of its competitors. The costs could run into the millions of dollars, depending on the size of the Internet phone company and the number of government requests.

The requirement to cooperate with law enforcement agencies is unlikely to drive any Internet phone company out of business, though it could cut into profits. Last year, the agencies conducted about 1,500 wiretaps, with the bulk of them in major cities like New York and Miami. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has yet to complete a wiretap over Internet phone services.

"It doesn't break the business model, but it means free telephone service is impossible," said John Pescatore, the lead security analyst at Gartner Inc., a research group. "You might see add-on surcharges."

Internet companies are starting to gear up for the federal requirements. Many Internet phone companies, including Vonage, which has the largest number of subscribers, already supply the police with the phone numbers that a person under court-sanctioned surveillance dials and the origin of calls he or she receives, plus information about the connections, like whether a conference call was convened. The vast majority of court orders for wiretapping involve this kind of monitoring, known as "trap and trace," which is typically used at the beginning of an investigation.

The less frequent, but more complicated, monitoring request is to allow the police to listen to conversations as they occur. In those cases, the differences between the architecture of traditional circuit-switched phone networks and the Internet are crucial.

With traditional phone networks, calls are routed through central circuit-switching stations, which connect long-haul phone networks and the wires that go into homes and offices. Typically, phone carriers have installed dedicated servers at or near the switches, which can isolate conversations from a specific phone number and send them to police agencies in a standardized format. In 1994, when federal wiretapping laws were revised, Congress initially set aside $500 million to help carriers pay for this extra equipment to route calls to the police.

In tapping an Internet phone, police first need to find out which company is responsible for maintaining the phone number. That could be a big phone company, a cable company, an Internet phone provider or peer-to-peer services that match callers but do not aid in the transmission of the call. Law enforcement agencies could also ask broadband providers to isolate voice streams on their networks that are traveling to and from a specific location.

"In the circuit-switch world, the caller and content were in the domain of a single carrier," said Julius P. Knapp, a deputy chief in the Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission. "In the Internet world, you have to identify who is in the best position to get the information."

Once the F.B.I. determines the suspect's Internet phone provider, it orders the company to program its servers to intercept specified calls to and from the suspect's phone. When a phone call is not tapped, the server sends the call to its destination. When a call is to be tapped, the phone company's server instructs an Internet router to make a copy of the call and send it to the law enforcement agency.

The task is complicated because the phone provider has to use special software to sniff out specific voice packets from among all the data packets traveling from the suspect's connection. Unlike traditional phone taps, this process does not reveal the caller's location, because users can plug their Internet phone modems into any broadband connection, even overseas.

But like any security check, this monitoring can slow networks and even degrade the quality of the call. It could also potentially intercept data packets along with other types of voice packets - from cellphones, for example - a possibility that alarms privacy groups worried that the police will collect information beyond their authority.

"The potential for misuse is pretty broad because what you are doing is a form of packet-sniffing," said Lee Tien, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. "The problem is that if you are using a sniffer box to perform the interception, you may handle all the traffic going through. In the end, a packet sniffer gets you everything."

Some groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, say law enforcement agencies are trying to turn phone companies into government spies. Law enforcement groups and service providers, however, say software is sufficiently sophisticated to only siphon relevant calls. They also say that having the companies take charge of finding a solution should allay suspicion that the government is trying to overstep its authority.

The F.B.I. is not trying to use the wiretap law "to dip into the Internet," said one senior official at the bureau.

Another issue involves decoding encrypted conversations. It is easier to encrypt digital conversations than those in an analog format, and a growing number of Internet phone providers are encrypting their calls. Unscrambling the calls requires another piece of software.

"It's an added layer of complexity," said Richard Tworek, the chief executive of Qovia, which provides software to Internet service providers to make sure the networks are running properly.

The biggest challenge, Mr. Tworek and others say, is tracking down phone conversations that are connected by peer-to-peer software. This software essentially piggybacks on the networks of its users; calls are not connected at a central location. To trace such calls, investigators would have to sift through trillions of packets at routers that channel data around Internet networks - a daunting task, industry experts say.

This type of peer-to-peer calling is still emerging, so the threat is rather remote. But some companies that offer this software operate overseas, so they fall outside the jurisdiction of the United States government. The communications commission's recent ruling does not cover this type of peer-to-peer communication.

Industry experts, though, expect this decentralized form of Internet phone service to spread, which will require even more sophisticated Internet wiretapping solutions. About that challenge, Mr. Tworek could only say, "It's a huge headache."

You Too Could Be A Suspected Terrorist

By Anthony D. Romero

Antonio Romero is what my mother calls me. Antonio Romero is also how I am known to many of my friends and family members. Unfortunately, the name Antonio Romero also appears on a U.S. Treasury Department list titled "Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons." The government provides only this name, some known aliases and a date of birth for Antonio Romero. No further attempt is made at delineating one Antonio Romero from the next. A quick Internet search found no fewer than 10 of them in New York, not to mention four Anthony Romeros.

The proliferation of government watch lists is a troubling development in the war on terrorism. I recently learned more about this list because my organization, the ACLU, had signed a funding agreement with the Combined Federal Campaign in order to receive $500,000 it gathers from federal employees. The agreement required the ACLU to affirm that it would not knowingly hire individuals named on various watch lists. We believed that we were not required to affirmatively check employees against any list. But when we later were told that indeed we would have to check all current and potential employees, we withdrew from the CFC.

All Americans have an important obligation and role in this country's efforts to protect us from those who would harm us. But these lists, which are notoriously vague and riddled with errors, are not the best way to fight terrorism. Just take me as an example.

The CFC would require the ACLU -- and the more than 2,000 nonprofits that receive its funding -- to affirmatively check the names of our employees against the lists. But what do we do if there is a match? What if the ACLU had checked my name against the watch lists and found the name of Antonio Romero? If it hired the Antonio Romero targeted by the government, knowingly or not, the ACLU would open itself up to civil or criminal sanctions. So the stakes are high. To make matters more complicated, CFC recipients are not alone in this new wonderland.

Under a little-known law from 1977, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, serious potential sanctions apply to all employers and people in the United States, not just to CFC recipients. With the expansion of terrorist watch lists since Sept. 11, the implications of this policy have grown exponentially, but the its existence and broad reach remain largely unknown. U.S. law forbids employers from hiring any individual designated on various government lists. If they hire someone from these lists unknowingly, the person or organization may be liable for civil sanctions, and if intentionally, criminal sanctions can be imposed.

The easiest method to distinguish me from the Antonio Romero on the watch list would be to compare birth dates. The Romero in question was born eight years before me. Great, problem solved -- except that under age discrimination law, employers cannot ask about my age or date of birth prior to hiring. Furthermore, not all the entries on the lists provide a date of birth or any other distinguishing information. Faced with these challenges, many employers might simply choose not to hire me.

While the ACLU has never checked any of its employees against any government watch list, nor asked job applicants for their dates of birth or national origin before hiring them -- we may not under federal law -- we find ourselves in a true Catch-22: Disregard the watch lists and thereby risk breaking the law, or comply and possibly violate employees' civil liberties.

The ACLU has challenged similar watch lists in the context of airport travel. We have litigated against "no-fly" lists on behalf of ACLU clients who do not belong on these lists but have no way to get their names off. When our clients travel, the "false positives" make their experiences at airports difficult. Imagine if these same problems extended to all people whose names appear on government watch lists and to all aspects of our lives.

As we debate the need to reorganize our intelligence system, we must have an open dialogue about what measures truly make us safer. Blacklisting innocent people from employment does not make us safer. Making lengthy and ambiguous watch lists that employers do not know about but are nevertheless liable to observe only serves to undercut public confidence in the government's efforts in the war on terrorism. The proliferation of these lists could threaten many basic rights while leaving little recourse for those affected.

We all have to shoulder our responsibility if we want to keep America safe from terrorists. But we don't want to live in a country where every company, large and small, for-profit and nonprofit, must ask every Antonio Romero, including me, to prove every day that he is not a terrorist because his name happens to appear on a list.

An interesting issue...

Critics brewing over Rock 'n' Roll cans

I mean, sure, you can argue that Elvis opened the door, but then Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Bo Didley came through.
-- William McKeen, editor of "Rock and Roll is Here to Stay"

MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin (AP) -- Miller Brewing is celebrating the "50th Anniversary of Rock 'n' Roll" with eight commemorative beer cans that feature Rolling Stone cover shots of Elvis Presley, Blondie and others.

What's missing, some say, is a black artist.

Robert Thompson, a professor of pop culture at Syracuse University, called the absence "beyond conspicuous," because black artists often are credited with inventing rock 'n' roll.

"It would be like doing a set of cans of six great Impressionist painters and not including any French people on it," he said. "It leaves out an enormous amount."

The promotion, which ties rock's anniversary to Presley's debut at Sun Studios, also depicts Alice Cooper, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Willie Nelson, as well as the guitars of Eric Clapton and Joe Walsh, on cans being issued this summer by the brewer and the magazine.

Gary Armstrong, chief marketing officer for Rolling Stone publisher Wenner Media, said race wasn't a consideration when choosing the artists.

"We didn't even consciously think pro or con, the same way that the only woman on there is Blondie. We just went with the people that we thought were appropriate," he said. "We went through (the covers) and said these people we don't think are appropriate, or wouldn't appeal to Miller drinkers."

Miller spokesman Scott Bussen said the company started with a broad wish list, but its choices were limited to Rolling Stone covers.

"I'm sure that our objective was to get as diverse a representation of musical acts as well as diversity," he said.

Armstrong noted that Rolling Stone wasn't around for the birth of rock 'n' roll -- it debuted in 1967, years after many formative black artists of the genre emerged. And some artists who appeared on its covers balked at being associated with a promotion involving alcohol, he said.

"These are the artists that gave us approval to use their images on the beer cans," Miller spokeswoman Molly Reilly said.

Six of the initial 10 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in 1986 were black, including Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles and Little Richard.

The Hall of Fame, which is throwing a summer concert series sponsored by Miller Lite, declined to comment on the cans. Todd Mesek, the hall's senior marketing director, called African heritage "critical" to rock's development.

"Arguably all rock 'n' roll came from, or at least was greatly influenced by, African culture," Mesek said. "Rock 'n' roll came from R&B, jazz, folk. All those genres before rock 'n' roll came together to birth rock 'n' roll."

William McKeen, chairman of the University of Florida journalism department and editor of the book "Rock and Roll is Here to Stay," called the list strange.

"I look at rock 'n' roll in racial terms. Rock 'n' roll is black America meeting white America," McKeen said. "It's about the merger of white people's music -- country -- with black people's music -- rural blues.

"I mean, sure, you can argue that Elvis opened the door, but then Chuck Berry and Little Richard and Bo Didley came through," McKeen said.

Armstrong said each artists shown represents developments in rock history. For instance, Willie Nelson represents Americana and rock's roots, while Alice Cooper is "stadium rock and shock."

The artists weren't paid to appear on the cans, although some received perks such as free beer or magazine subscriptions, Armstrong said.

He said he hasn't heard anything negative about the promotion, which is running in conjunction with three Rolling Stone special editions: rock immortals, moments and photos. In the immortals edition, 20 of the 50 rockers are black.

Black rocker Lenny Kravitz has criticized the use of the 19-year-old Presley's first Sun Studio recording as rock's birth date, saying it leaves out the true pioneers. Kravitz's agent did not respond to an interview request.

Thompson said everyone has an opinion when it comes to rock, and maybe the cans were meant to generate buzz more than anything else.

"My guess is a lot of people will have a lot to say about this list," he said. "Oftentimes that's the point."

I'm not guilty - but my brain is

A leading neuroscientist caused a sensation by claiming crimes are the result of brain abnormalities. Laura Spinney investigates a slanging match between scientists and philosophers

Last month, the case against Patrizia Reggiani was reopened in Italy. She is serving a 26-year jail sentence for having ordered the killing of her husband, the fashion supremo Maurizio Gucci. At the first trial in 1998, expert witnesses dismissed her lawyers' claims that surgery for a brain tumour had changed her personality. The new trial has been granted because her lawyers believe that brain imaging techniques developed since then will reveal damage that was previously undetectable, and strengthen their case for an acquittal.

The idea that someone should not be punished if their abnormal neural make-up leaves them no choice but to break the law is contentious but not new. However, one prominent neuroscientist has sparked a storm by picking it up and turning it round. Writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's leading newspapers, Wolf Singer argued that crime itself should be taken as evidence of brain abnormality, even if no abnormality can be found, and criminals treated as incapable of having acted otherwise.

His claims have brought howls of outrage from academics across the sciences and humanities. But Singer counters that the idea is nothing but a natural extension of the thesis that free will is an illusion - a theory that he feels is supported by decades of work in neuroscience.

The head of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Singer is best known for his work on the so-called binding problem of perception. This is the conundrum of how we perceive an object as an integrated whole, when we know that the brain processes the various elements of it - colours, angles, and so on - separately. His group was among the first to suggest, and then demonstrate, that the answer lay in the synchronisation encoding the separate features. He has since extrapolated those ideas to the process by which we make decisions, which has led him to question whether we are really the free-acting agents we imagine ourselves to be.

His argument goes like this. Neurobiology tells us that there is no centre in the brain where actions are planned and decisions made. Decisions emerge from a collection of dynamic systems that run in parallel and are underpinned by nerve cells that talk to each other - the brain. If you look back in evolution to say, the sea slug Aplysia, you see that the building blocks of this brain have not changed. The amino acids, the nerve cells, the signalling pathways and largely the genes, are the same. "It's the same material [in humans], just more complex," says Singer. "So the same rules must govern what humans do. Unavoidable conclusion."

He argues that the human brain has to be complex to compute all the myriad variables that influence each decision we make - genetic factors, socially learned factors, momentary triggers including commands and wishes, to name a few. And because it considers most of those variables at a subconscious level, we are not aware of all the factors that make us behave in a certain way, just as we are not aware of all the elements of an object that are processed separately by our visual brains. As humans, however, we are able to extract some of those factors and make them the focus of attention; that is, render them conscious. And with our behaviour, as with the world we see, we yearn to build a coherent picture. So we might justify our decisions in ways that have nothing to do with our real, subconscious motivations.

The most striking example of this is hypnotism. Singer himself learned how to hypnotise while a student at Cambridge University. At a party, he instructed a Royal Air Force pilot to remove the bulb from a light fitting and place it in a flowerpot, on hearing the word Germany. The pilot did so in mid-conversation, much to the amusement of the onlookers. They were amateurs, they didn't debrief him properly. And when they told him what he had done, because he had no recollection of doing it, he was extremely disturbed.

According to Singer, what the pilot did is explained by the structure of his brain and its inherent weakness, if you see it as a weakness to be susceptible to hypnotism. The same goes for a murderer or a thief, he says. We live in a society where people whose behaviour is considered to deviate from the norm - as determined arbitrarily by that society - answer to the justice system. But the way they are treated by that system is, he believes, inconsistent.

If some abnormality is found in a person's brain, the doctor's report is submitted as mitigating evidence and the defendant may be treated more leniently. If nothing is discovered, they are not. Take the case of the British man who terrorised 200 officials because he thought they intended to have him sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Psychiatrists found no sign of a mitigating mental illness, and he was jailed for life. But, says Singer, if a person does something antisocial, the reason for it is in the brain. The underlying cause may be a twist in a gene, or a tiny hormonal imbalance that cannot be detected with current technology. "It could have multiple reasons," he says. "But these reasons must all manifest themselves in brain architecture."

In practice, he says, the change in thinking he advocates wouldn't change the way we treat criminals all that much. People considered a danger to society should be kept away from society, re-educated as far as possible and in cases where this is not possible, simply kept away, as they already are. But he would like to see the courts place less burden on psychiatrists, who are not capable of identifying all the subtle structural changes that lead individuals to behave as they do. "As long as we can't identify all the causes, which we cannot and will probably never be able to do, we should grant that for everybody there is a neurobiological reason for being abnormal," he says.

He does not argue that a criminal should not be held responsible for their crime. After all, if a person is not responsible for their own brain, who is? Neither does he argue that we should do away with concepts of good and evil. "We judge our fellow men as either conforming to our rules or breaking them," he says. "We need to continue to assign values to our behaviour, because there is no other way to organise society." However, he does argue that when people commit crimes, they are not acting independently of the nerve cells and amino acids that make up their brains, and that behave according to certain deterministic principles.

One important implication of his argument is that treatment meted out to offenders should be less about revenge and punishment, and more about assessing their risk of re-offending, given the brain they have. Of course, this already happens. If a woman has been driven to a crime of passion after severe provocation, having otherwise lived an exemplary life, she is considered less of a danger to society than a man who has frequently abducted teenage girls, raped and murdered them. Another corollary of Singer's ideas that he recognises will be harder for people to swallow, is that the consequences of a crime should be considered less important than they are, since an individual can only control his own actions and not those of others. For example, a driver seen running a red light should be treated the same way whether or not he hit the child who, unseen from the wheel, stepped into the road at the same moment.

"Breathtaking," is how Ted Honderich, a philosopher at University College London, scathingly describes Singer's foray into traditional philosophical territory. Honderich says philosophers have discussed different definitions of freedom for centuries, one of which is perfectly compatible with the sort of determinism Singer describes. That is, if free action is defined as action caused by your character - whatever hereditary and environmental influences contributed to that character - then you are free even if your brain does resemble that of a slug.

And although the discussion might appear to have degenerated into a slanging match between scientists and philosophers, neuroscientists have also criticised Singer. "We don't know enough to make such conclusions," says Cornelius Weiller, an expert in brain imaging at Hamburg University. Singer is right, he says, that there is no homunculus in the brain, making our decisions for us. But the question remains, how do all those parallel computations become integrated, and how does the self feel that "I" made the decision? Science has yet to answer the binding problem of decision-making.

In response to the accusation that he is rehashing old ideas, Singer points out that the German newspaper debate got under way without him, and he was merely responding. So the more interesting question, perhaps, is why the public is interested again now. One reason, he thinks, is that people look at their societies, see that the totalitarian ones failed, and realise that the most complex are self-organising and impossible to steer or control. "You free yourself from authorities, including the gods, but you find yourself part of an evolving system," he says. "Now you realise that you don't really have influence on the dynamics of the systems in which you are. I think this gives a feeling of helplessness."

Biometric tech puts ID at your fingertips

NEW YORK (AP) -- Stuffing something in a public locker usually isn't a memorable experience. You drop a coin, take the key and move on.

But at the Statue of Liberty, recently reopened after a two-year closure, stashing a package offers a glimpse into the future. To rent, close and reopen lockers, visitors touch an electronic reader that scans fingerprints.

"It's easy," Taiwanese visitor Yu-Sheng Lee, 26, said after stowing a bag. "I think it's good. I don't have to worry about a key or something like that."

Like nearly every other tourist at the statue that day, this was Lee's first experience with biometrics -- the identification of an individual based on personal characteristics like fingerprints, facial features or iris patterns.

While the technology is not new, having seen use for years to restrict access in corporate and military settings, it is only now creeping into everyday life. Over the next few years, people currently unfamiliar with the technology will be asked to use it in everything from travel settings to financial transactions.

The Nine Zero, an upscale hotel in Boston, recently began letting guests in its $3,000-a-night Cloud Nine suite enter and exit by looking into a camera that analyzes their iris patterns. Piggly Wiggly Co. grocery stores in the South just launched a pay-by-fingerprint system, though pilot tests elsewhere have had lukewarm results.

"All these customer-facing applications, they're emerging," said Joseph Kim, a consultant with the International Biometric Group, which follows the industry. "We'll be seeing a lot more very, very soon. Whether that sticks or not depends on how customers feel about it."

Feelings seemed mixed about the lockers at the Statue of Liberty on a muggy New York afternoon last week.

Some people were befuddled by the system and had to put their fingers on the reader several times before a scan was properly made. Others forgot their locker number upon their return, or didn't remember which finger they had used to check it out. One young woman accidentally put her ticket to the statue in the locker, requiring her to open it and then re-register it all over again with another finger scan.

With all the confusion, lines at the three touchscreen kiosks that control the bank of 170 lockers frequently stretched six or seven people deep, requiring a five-minute wait.

"I think it's overly complicated. It takes too much time," said Stephen Chemsak, 26, who lives in Japan. To him the old-fashioned key system would have been much better.

The lockers were made necessary by new security measures at the statue that include a ban on large packages. Brad Hill, whose family business, Evelyn Hill Inc., has run the island's concessions for 73 years, decided that the usual public lockers would be problematic because people often lose the keys. And that seemed to become even more likely now that tourists have to empty their pockets for a metal detector on their way into the statue.

"Biometrics seemed the most logical choice," he said. After all, he added with a laugh, people "don't lose their finger."

Hill expects visitors will find the lockers easier once they get used to them. Representatives from the locker maker, Smarte Carte Inc., say the biometric aspect often requires a fair amount of coaching, especially for people who aren't very familiar with computers.

Smarte Carte's fingerprint lockers were introduced two years ago at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, and also can be found in Chicago's Union Station and the Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure theme parks in Florida.

The company adopted the biometric system for the airport lockers to assure the Transportation Security Administration that the bins could not be rented by one person then opened by someone else.

Fingerprint biometric systems generally work by reducing the image of a print to a template, a mathematic algorithm that gets stored in a database and can be checked when the person returns for later scans. In applications like the biometric lockers, the print itself is not stored or sent to authorities.

However, prints are being run through terrorist watch lists in the biggest deployment of biometrics yet -- the federal government's new system for tracking foreign travelers.

Now in its early stages, the program, known as US-VISIT, calls for visitors to go through biometric scans to ensure that they are who their visa or passport says they are. Passports issued by the United States and other countries are getting new chips that will have facial-recognition data, and other biometrics might be added.

Separately, iris-scanning systems have cropped up in European airports as a way to speed immigration controls.

But you won't have to be a jet-setter to encounter biometrics more and more. For one, it's increasingly being used to control access to computers.

And scattered grocery stores have tested systems that let consumers check out with a touch of a fingerprint scanner. Piggly Wiggly recently installed such a system at four South Carolina stores and expects to expand it to 116 other outlets, saying it offers speed, convenience and protection against credit card theft.

< The problem with biometrics is this, and noone seems to notice,: Any SECOND now, they're going to require all such systems to be embedded with wireless connections to a national database. >

Can you 'own' a colour?

A spat over who's allowed to use the colour orange has broken out between mobile phone company Orange and upstart easyMobile. Is it possible to "own" a colour?
Unveiling plans to enter the fiercely competitive UK mobile phone market, easyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou would have been naive to assume his competitors would simply step aside.


easyJet is moving into the mobile phone business

What he may be more surprised about is the nature of his first major battle with competitors in the multi-billion pound industry.

Unsettled by easyMobile's plans to use the same vivid orange livery as other arms of easyGroup, the mobile phone company Orange is arguing it got there first.

It claims the prospect of its rival having a similar logo to its own will cause confusion among its customers and damage its business.

Can a company really claim ownership of a colour?

Shapes and sounds

Announcing his intention to fight for the right to be orange, Mr Haji-Ioannou said: "I'm quite happy to see them [Orange] in court. I don't believe they have a case."

What you have got is a situation where the easyGroup has built up a strong reputation with the colour orange in areas including airlines,

Morag Macdonald

Use of the colour is the easyGroup's right, says a spokesman. "It's the colour we have always used, right from the outset, when we set up the airline and we have used it ever since."

But companies are very particular about protecting their image, and often consider their logo's colours as their own.

BP took action against an Irish petrol company revamping its forecourts in a shade of green similar to its own, while Deutsche Telekom has been defending its magenta hues in Europe.

The reality is that companies can take action over their logos as well as their names, says Morag Macdonald, of solicitors Bird & Bird.

Trademarks mean firms have a right to protect "shapes, sounds or colours if it's distinctive as part of their business", she says.

Hat firm

The rules apply in a particular area, so Cadbury's, for example, can argue that their famous shade of purple cannot be used by other chocolate makers.


Orange is keen to protect its logo

They could not stop a firm making hats from using the same shade though, as they would be in different businesses.

Further protection is available under "passing-off" laws, which allow a firm to argue a competitor is making itself appear like another product to take part of its market.

Things are not so simple when a company expands into new areas, as has happened with Mr Haji-Ioannou's firm.

"What you have got is a situation where the easyGroup has built up a strong reputation with the colour orange in areas including airlines," says Ms Macdonald.

"Meanwhile, Orange have built up a strong reputation in mobile telephony."

Had the firms remained in separate areas there would have been no problem, but with the two companies now finding themselves as rivals there is a clear problem.

Green meanz Heinz

It is not just Orange which is picky about its image.

Heinz has legal protection for the distinctive turquoise of its cans.

Toblerone has the rights to its triangular chocolate boxes and JR Freeman and Son have registered the first six bars of Bach's Air on a G String in relation to their cigars.

BP was successful in its battle against its Irish rival, arguing that potential customers could pull off the road expecting to see one of their stations because they had seen the colour.

For Orange, the argument rests on its trademark of a colour it has very specifically registered as orange Pantone No 151.

"We know people aren't stupid, that they can tell the difference between the words 'Orange' and 'Easy', but 'Orange' has come to mean something and we want to protect our brand," says a spokeswoman.

Driver Watching DVD: Not Guilty

KENAI, Alaska -- A man was acquitted Tuesday of charges he caused a fatal crash by taking his eyes off the road while watching a movie on a DVD player mounted on his truck dashboard.

Jurors acquitted Erwin Petterson Jr., 29, of two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of manslaughter. No law in Alaska prohibits operating a DVD player in view of a driver.

Petterson had been charged in the deaths of Robert Weiser, 60, and Donna Weiser, 56, when his truck collided with their vehicle on a highway in southern Alaska on October 12, 2002.

"I think this case was really important because it brought out the issue for public discussion," said the prosecutor, June Stein, after the acquittal. "It's probably an issue the Legislature should address."

Neither Petterson nor his lawyer could immediately be reached for comment after the acquittal. Lindsey Petterson said her brother was taking a long drive in his truck.

"He hasn't been able to drive in over two years," she said. "He just wanted to be alone for a while. He's very happy he can get on with his life again."

Stein argued that Petterson and his passenger Jonathan Douglas were watching a DVD movie when Petterson's pickup truck crossed the center line, hitting the Weisers' sport utility vehicle head-on. Petterson testified he was not watching a movie and that his truck strayed into oncoming traffic when he reached for a soda.

The Weisers died at the scene.

Marty Zoda, Douglas' former wife, testified that her ex-husband told her the DVD was running when the accident happened, a claim Douglas denied.

If installed as recommended, DVD players will not work in an automobile unless the emergency brake is on or the vehicle is in park. Prosecutors said Petterson overrode those safety measures when he installed an entertainment system including a DVD player, speakers and a Sony PlayStation 2 in his pickup truck.

David Weiser, a son of the dead couple, said the family was not surprised by the verdict because skid marks at the scene and Petterson's driving record were not allowed as evidence.

"I'm very disappointed in how the justice system has to prove a case against someone who took two lives," said David Weiser.

< While it may have been the wrong outcome in this case, what is wrong is trying to punish someone for something that as far as they can tell, didn't happen. If he killed two people through negligence, or through stupidity, that's one kind of crime, one kind of charge. If he did it willfully or maliciously, that's Murder. Just because you didn't get your way doesn't mean justice wasn't served. Upon examination of the evidence within the standards designed to protect the innocent (supposedly), which is the only way they should be designed, he was found not-guilty. Like OJ. So David Weiser, shut the hell up. >

Drivers let Big Brother in to get a break

In two new tests, car owners will be able to let insurance companies monitor their driving via new technology in exchange for lower rates.
The technology will track some combination of when, where, how far and how fast they drive, giving insurers a way to reward low-risk driving. Now just experiments, the technology might be a glimpse of the future of car insurance.

The trials will begin this year:

? Progressive will announce its TripSense trial in Minnesota on Aug. 24. Customers who sign up will get a device the size of a Tic Tac box to plug into their cars. The device will track speed and how many miles are driven at what times of day. Every few months, customers would unplug the device from the car, plug it into a computer, download the data and send it to Progressive. Depending on results, discounts will range from 5% to 25%.

? In Great Britain, major insurer Norwich Union will start its Pay As You Drive test in a few weeks. Volunteers will get a device the size of a Palm computer installed in their cars. The gadget will use global positioning satellite technology to track where the car goes, constantly sending information to Norwich Union wirelessly. Cars that spend more time in safer areas will qualify for bigger discounts.

In 2001, Progressive abandoned a test of a system similar to Norwich Union's because of high costs and privacy concerns. "People were being tracked, and to some it seemed like a Big Brotherish thing to do," says Progressive executive Dave Huber.

Progressive's new test is an attempt to give customers more control. After signing up, a car owner will get the device and software in the mail. The customer would then plug the device into the on-board diagnostic port under the dashboard. The port is on all models sold in the USA since 1996.

Through the port, the device constantly tracks car speed. By comparing that with a clock in the TripSense device, the device figures how far the car goes, mapping it against the time of day.

At the end of each policy term, the customer would download the data and see what discount he or she would get. Customers can see all their data before deciding to send it to Progressive, and can decide not to send it ? and not get extra discounts.

In Minnesota, where the highway speed limit is 70 mph, drivers who go over 75 less than 0.1% of the time get an extra 5% discount. Drivers who avoid the most dangerous times ? midnight to 4 a.m. on weekends ? get bigger discounts than those who don't.

Other insurers will watch the tests closely.

"It's still experimental," says Julie Rochman of the American Insurance Association. "A lot more research needs to be done, but these certainly are issues that are interesting from an insurance and safety perspective."

"We're interested to see if the program could cause people to become safer drivers" ? perhaps by trying to stay under 75 to qualify for discounts, Huber says.

The Quantum Sleeper

Big Business Becoming Big Brother

The government is increasingly using corporations to do its surveillance work, allowing it to get around restrictions that protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, according to a report released Monday by the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that works to protect civil liberties.
Data aggregators -- companies that aggregate information from numerous private and public databases -- and private companies that collect information about their customers are increasingly giving or selling data to the government to augment its surveillance capabilities and help it track the activities of people.

Because laws that restrict government data collection don't apply to private industry, the government is able to bypass restrictions on domestic surveillance. Congress needs to close such loopholes, the ACLU said, before the exchange of information gets out of hand.
"Americans would really be shocked to discover the extent of the practices that are now common in both industry and government," said the ACLU's Jay Stanley, author of the report. "Industry and government know that, so they have a strong incentive to not publicize a lot of what's going on."
Last year, JetBlue Airways acknowledged that it secretly gave defense contractor Torch Concepts 5 million passenger itineraries for a government project on passenger profiling without the consent of the passengers. The contractor augmented the data with passengers' Social Security numbers, income information and other personal data to test the feasibility of a screening system called CAPPS II. That project was slated to launch later this year until the government scrapped it. Other airlines also contributed data to the project.
Information about the data-sharing project came to light only by accident. Critics like Stanley say there are many other government projects like this that are proceeding in secret.
The ACLU released the Surveillance-Industrial Complex report in conjunction with a new website designed to educate the public about how information collected from them is being used.
The report listed three ways in which government agencies obtain data from the private sector: by purchasing the data, by obtaining a court order or simply by asking for it. Corporations freely share information with government agencies because they don't want to appear to be unpatriotic, they hope to obtain future lucrative Homeland Security contracts with the government or they fear increased government scrutiny of their business practices if they don't share.
But corporations aren't the only ones giving private data to the government. In 2002, the Professional Association of Diving Instructors voluntarily gave the FBI the names and addresses of some 2 million people who had studied scuba diving in previous years. And a 2002 survey found that nearly 200 colleges and universities gave the FBI information about students. Most of these institutions provided the information voluntarily without having received a subpoena.
Collaborative surveillance between government and the private sector is not new. For three decades during the Cold War, for example, telegraph companies like Western Union, RCA Global and International Telephone and Telegraph gave the National Security Agency, or NSA, all cables that went to or from the United States. Operation Shamrock, which ran from 1945 to 1975, helped the NSA compile 75,000 files on individuals and organizations, many of them involved in peace movements and civil disobedience.
These days, the increasing amount of electronic data that is collected and stored, along with developments in software technology, make it easy for the government to sort through mounds of data quickly to profile individuals through their connections and activities.
Although the Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits the government from keeping dossiers on Americans unless they are the specific target of an investigation, the government circumvents the legislation by piggybacking on private-sector data collection.
Corporations are not subject to congressional oversight or Freedom of Information Act requests -- two methods for monitoring government activities and exposing abuses. And no laws prevent companies from voluntarily sharing most data with the government.
"The government is increasingly ... turning to private companies, which are not subject to the law, and buying or compelling the transfer of private data that it could not collect itself," the report states.

A government proposal for a national ID card, for example, was shot down by civil liberties groups and Congress for being too intrusive and prone to abuse. And Congress voted to cancel funding for John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness, a national database that would have tracked citizens' private transactions such as Web surfing, bank deposits and withdrawals, doctor visits, travel itineraries and visa and passport applications.
But this hasn't stopped the government from achieving the same ends by buying similar data from private aggregators like Acxiom, ChoicePoint, Abacus and LexisNexis. According to the ACLU, ChoicePoint's million-dollar contracts with the Justice Department, Drug Enforcement Administration and other federal agencies let authorities tap into its billions of records to track the interests, lifestyles and activities of Americans.

By using corporations, the report said, the government can set up a system of "distributed surveillance" to create a bigger picture than it could create with its own limited resources and at the same time "insulate surveillance and information-handling practices from privacy laws or public scrutiny."
Most of the transactions people make are with the private sector, not the government. So the amount of data available through the private sector is much greater.
Every time people withdraw money from an ATM, buy books or CDs, fill prescriptions or rent cars, someone else, somewhere, is collecting information about them and their transactions. On its own, each bit of information says little about the person being tracked. But combined with health and insurance records, bank loans, divorce records, election contributions and political activities, corporations can create a detailed dossier.
And studies show that Americans trust corporations more than they trust their government, so they're more likely to give companies their information freely. A 2002 phone survey about a proposed national ID plan, conducted by Gartner, found respondents preferred private industry -- such as bank or credit card companies -- to administer a national ID system rather than the government.
Stanley said most people are unaware how information about them is passed on to government agencies and processed.
"People have a right to know just how information about them is being used and combined into a high-resolution picture of (their) life," Stanley said.
Although the Privacy Act attempted to put stops on government surveillance, Stanley said that its authors did not anticipate the explosion in private-sector data collection.
"It didn't anticipate the growth of data aggregators and the tremendous amount of information that they're able to put together on virtually everyone or the fact that the government could become customers of these companies," Stanley said.
Although the report focused primarily on the flow of data from corporations to the government, data flow actually goes both ways. The government has shared its watch lists with the private sector, opening the way for potential discrimination against customers who appear on the lists. Under section 314 of the Patriot Act, the government can submit a suspect list to financial institutions to see whether the institution has conducted transactions with any individuals or organizations on the list. But once the government shares the list, nothing prevents the institution from discriminating against individuals or organizations on the list.
After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI circulated a watch list to corporations that contained hundreds of names of people the FBI was interested in talking to, although the people were not under investigation or wanted by the FBI. Companies were more than happy to check the list against the names of their customers. And if they used the list for other purposes, it's difficult to know. The report notes that there is no way to determine how many job applicants might have been denied work because their names appeared on the list.
"It turns companies into sheriff's deputies, responsible not just for feeding information to the government, but for actually enforcing the government's wishes, for example by effectively blacklisting anyone who has been labeled as a suspect under the government's less-than-rigorous procedures for identifying risks," the report states.
Last March, the Technology and Privacy Advisory Committee, created by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to examine government data mining, issued a report (PDF) stating that "rapid action is necessary" to establish clear guidelines for responsible government data mining.
The ACLU's Stanley said companies are in the initial stages of the Homeland Security gold rush to get government contracts, and that the public and Congress need to do something before policies and practices of private-sector surveillance solidify.
"Government security agencies always have a hunger for more and more information," said Stanley. "It's only natural. It makes it easier for law enforcement if they have access to as much info as they want. But it's crucial that policy makers and political leaders balance the needs of law enforcement and the value of privacy that Americans have always expected and enjoyed."

Fahrenheit FBI

By Declan McCullagh -->
A new U.S. government decision extending wiretapping regulations to the Internet raises far more questions than it answers.
The Federal Communications Commission voted 5-0 last week to prohibit businesses from offering broadband or Internet phone service unless they provide police with backdoors for wiretapping access. Formal regulations are expected by early next year.
But the commissioners didn't give the FBI and its allies at the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration everything they wanted.
In the police agencies' original request, submitted in March, they asked the FCC to force surveillance back doors into instant-messaging programs and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications that do not use the traditional telephone network. The FCC politely declined, with Chairman Michael Powell saying those services were exempt from the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and that it was "unnecessary to identify future services and entities subject to" mandatory wiretapping requirements.
How will you force a company based in Luxembourg to insert backdoors in its software when it has no obligation to do so? So what happens next? Here are some questions that could be asked of Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller:
? Your request to the FCC said that broadband and VoIP companies may raise prices to "recover their CALEA implementation costs from their customers." How do you square higher prices with President Bush's speech in March calling for "affordable broadband" for all Americans?
? Congress gave telephone companies $500 million to buy new equipment to comply with CALEA. Why should Internet companies not receive the same treatment? Is it because Verizon, SBC and the other former Bells have well-connected lobbying outposts in Washington, D.C.--but Vonage, 8x8 and other VoIP start-ups do not?
? Skype CEO Niklas Zennstrom told me last fall that "we do not have any legal obligation to provide any means for interception" in his company's VoIP software. How will you force a company based in Luxembourg to insert backdoors in its software when it has no obligation to do so?
? Even if Skype redesigned its software to satisfy the FBI, how would you stop its users from switching to a competitor that offered secure communications without back doors for police surveillance? Why would criminals, terrorists and other miscreants choose to use eavesdropping-enabled software if a secure option was available?
? The FBI rarely gives up when it comes to demanding eavesdropping access. Your predecessors Louis Freeh and Janet Reno strong-armed Congress into approving CALEA on Oct. 7, 1994, one day before politicians left town for a fall recess. Capitol Hill is already considering VoIP regulation--will the FBI now ask Congress for regulatory power over peer-to-peer VoIP applications and instant messaging?
? The popular SourceForge.net site lists dozens of free VoIP applications and programming libraries without FBI back doors. Fortunately for you, SourceForge.net is run by VA Software of Fremont, Calif., and is under U.S. jurisdiction. Should VA Software be permitted to continue distributing VoIP programs that don't guarantee access to the FBI?
? Skype, PGPfone, and the still-incomplete GPGfone intentionally glue encryption into their VoIP applications to make them untappable. Your predecessor, Louis Freeh, lobbied Congress to ban strong encryption, and one House of Representatives committee agreed to his proposal in 1997. Will you pick up where he left off?
? Conservative groups including Americans for Tax Reform, the Free Congress Foundation and the Rutherford Institute
Given that VoIP and instant-messaging clients aren't widely used yet, why not try the voluntary approach before talking about banning certain technologies? warn that granting your requests would "drive up costs, impair and delay innovation, threaten privacy and force development of the latest Internet innovations offshore." These groups share President Bush's commitment to the war on terror and backed you, John Ashcroft, when your nomination to be attorney general was foundering in the Senate. When they suggest other ways to accomplish your stated goal of protecting America, might they be right?
? Two of the FCC's five commissioners expressed reservations about the legality of extending CALEA to broadband and certain VoIP services. Commissioner Michael Copps warned: "If these proposals become the rules and reasons we have to defend in court, we may find ourselves making a stand on very shaky ground." Do you think that the FCC has the authority to extend CALEA to the Internet, given that Congress explicitly rejected that notion a decade ago?
? You've been saying that terrorists may use VoIP services to "evade lawful electronic surveillance." But the only detailed court statistics available show that 77 percent of wiretap applications were for drug crimes, and terrorism-related offenses were so few they didn't even make the chart. Is terrorism the real reason behind your wiretap push?
? The best figures available show that only 4 percent of wiretaps were targeted at computers and electronic devices last year, with the rest aimed at the traditional phone network. Vonage and other VoIP companies have pledged to work with you. Given that VoIP and instant-messaging clients aren't widely used yet, why not try the voluntary approach before talking about banning certain technologies?
? American technology companies would like to help the FBI with legitimate investigations done under proper judicial oversight. But CALEA's requirements go hand in hand with the Patriot Act, which expanded the circumstances under which police may obtain wiretaps without a judge's prior approval. What assurances can you provide that the substantial powers you're seeking won't be abused?

'OutKast' not allowed in Kansas libraries

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- The Kansas attorney general has withheld more than 1,600 compact discs from distribution to state libraries because officials determined the albums promote violence or illegal activity, records show.
The albums removed by Attorney General Phill Kline's office were part of 51,000 discs given to Kansas as part of a nationwide settlement to resolve allegations of price fixing.
The confiscated CDs included recordings by 25 musicians, including rap artists such as OutKast and Notorious B.I.G., rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Stone Temple Pilots, and even older acts such as Lou Reed and the 1980s experimental group Devo.
The list of albums was obtained by The Associated Press last week through an open-records request.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the decision amounted to censorship.
"What he's doing is enforcing his concept of decency on libraries around the state of Kansas, and that's not his business," said Dick Kurtenbach, executive director of the ACLU in Kansas and western Missouri.
Whitney Watson, a spokesman for Kline, said the attorney general would not discuss the screening of the CDs but said the decision to remove some albums was made to ensure state officials were not disseminating objectionable material.
Watson said the office's consumer-protection and antitrust division vetted the list. In some cases, they were familiar enough with the albums to determine if they had questionable content. In others, they looked at Internet databases of lyrics.
"We don't have the manpower to look at every album and every song lyric, but we feel we removed most of the albums that did not mesh with the values of a majority of Kansans," she said.
Kansas is one of 40 states receiving the free CDs for public libraries as part of a 2002 court settlement with the music industry over claims of CD price-fixing.
Attorneys general in several other states also have screened their CDs, often removing controversial artists or albums including explicit lyrics. Indiana Attorney General Steve Carter removed 5,300 discs, or 5 percent of the 107,000 his state was scheduled to receive.
The Kansas Library Association, which advocates for public libraries, said it had no objection to the attorney general's actions.
"This was very similar to what libraries do all the time," said Rosanne Siemens, the group's executive director. "It wasn't so much an issue of taking things out but determining what would be best. They did libraries a big favor by selecting these CDs because there's no way libraries could have said what they wanted."

Terror fight turns to technology

There is a growing consensus in the US that new technologies could help intelligence services do a better job at sharing vital information.

US is on high alert of a potential terror attackThe 9/11 commission's final report paints a picture of 15 different US intelligence services using 15 different databases, with none of them able to interact with one another.
It is what could be described as a "dumb" network. It is based on a decades-old model in which information can be shared only within each organisation.
This lack of communication was highlighted by the New York-based think-tank, the Markle Foundation, and the 9/11 commission's final report relies heavily on its recommendations.
"Say there was a field agent in the Chicago FBI office, and a CIA operative in Kabul," explained Zoe Baird, Markle Foundation president.
"Each got different bits of information that if put together might point to a bio warfare attack in Chicago.
"Under the current system, the reports from these two agents are unlikely to ever find each other."
Linked network
Ms Baird assembled a task force two years ago to tackle that problem.
She brought together computer engineers, ex-intelligence officials, and privacy experts in a quest to figure out how to make government data sharing "smarter".
Technology isn't an answer for any of this. There's just no magic wand for increasing information sharing
George Smith, GlobalSecurity.org Their answer was to link all of the existing intelligence databases into a network.
The idea is to allow that FBI agent in Chicago and that CIA operative in Kabul to find each other's reports, and foil that bio-terror attack.
"These reports would be linked by technology because they would contain similar words like virus or Chicago," said Ms Baird.
"And the people working on these problems could then seek out further information from each other, or form an informal working group working on similar problems."
It is the kind of technology used by businesses around the globe, and would even employ a Google-like search engine.
It could be put together quickly, with hardware and software straight off the shelf.
'No magic wand'
The 9/11 commission likes the idea. The final report suggests making the Markle Foundation's findings the centrepiece of any government network re-vamp.

The 9/11 report talks of agencies failing to share informationSceptics, though, have heard it all before and question of the wisdom of focusing on technology alone.
"Technology isn't an answer for any of this," said George Smith, senior fellow at the security think-tank, GlobalSecurity.org.
"There's just no magic wand for increasing information sharing."
Mr Smith says that the real problems the government must address are not so much technological, as social.
"The nature of bureaucracies, and the way people regard information, personality conflicts, identity conflicts between agencies, the fact that relationships may not exist between individuals spread across US services, and of course the great amount of secrecy accompanying the war on terror," he explained.
The Markle Foundation also favours new, top-down rules regarding the sharing of information.
Zoë Baird thinks that the nature of bureaucracy can insure the new technology takes.
"If government officials are clearly empowered with a new set of rules, we think that they're used to abiding by rules and that that's a cultural thing," she said.
"And if the rules are different now then people will be able to make that adjustment and that the technology will help them."
Protect the innocent
But some privacy experts worry about a system that makes the government better at spying and sharing information.
The key here is to really use the technology and the policy and build privacy checks and balances, accountability, into the system design at the outset
Jim Dempsey, Center for Democracy and Technology Civil rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, fears that what the Markle Foundation and the 9/11 commission envision as a risk assessment tool could easily assess the wrong risk.
"Now, when you're generating suspicion about people, you ought to be doing it, at the very least, on accurate data," said Lee Tien, senior counsel with the San Francisco-based group.
"And yet the record of both federal agencies, as well as state agencies and the private sector, of having accurate records in their databases is really quite poor."
But the Markle Foundation taskforce says that privacy can be protected with the new network.
It could be designed with a set of privacy safeguards which would control access to certain bits of data, and keep other bits anonymous.
"The key here is to really use the technology and the policy and build privacy checks and balances, accountability, into the system design at the outset," said Jim Dempsey, director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Technology.
"If we do that, I think we can both improve national security and protect privacy at the same time."
Call for action
Any technology upgrade of the US intelligence system would be a welcome one for some agents on the frontline.
Matt Levitt, who spent years in counter-intelligence for the FBI, remembers computer systems and networks that kept the agency virtually cut-off from the rest of the intelligence community.

The US is looking at ways of improving its intel networkHe welcomes all the talk about improving information-sharing but is frustrated at the lack of action to make this a reality.
"What no one seems to be offer a satisfactory answer to is what is causing these delays, and why can't we make this happen," said Mr Levitt.
"In the private sector, this would simply never be tolerated, and here we're talking about something more than how to best and most efficiently make a buck, but how to best and most efficiently protect the nation."
Technology will not solve all of the intelligence community's problems.
But a lack of proper technological tools could well be the biggest single thing hampering US intelligence agencies from doing what they need to do.

< People with any intelligence are now terrorized more by the "War on Terror" than anything the war is against &gt

Safety officials recommend requiring `black boxes' for passenger vehicles

The government should require data recorders in all passenger vehicles, federal safety officials said Tuesday in a recommendation arising from the investigation of a car crash that killed 10 people and injured 63.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators concluded the 86-year-old driver had stepped on the gas instead of the brake and plowed into a farmers market in Santa Monica, Calif., on July 16, 2003.
They came to that determination without testimony from the driver, George Weller, who refused on his lawyer's advice to talk with the investigators.
The board concluded investigators could have gained a better scientific understanding of Weller's behavior had his 1992 Buick LeSabre been outfitted with an event data recorder, or "black box."
"We believe very strongly that vehicles should have a black box," NTSB chairman Ellen Engleman Conners said
In the Santa Monica crash, investigators came to their decision on Weller's actions after ruling out mechanical failure, weather, fatigue, alcohol or drugs. Weller hired a lawyer to help him fight vehicular manslaughter charges and civil lawsuits.
The NTSB recommended black boxes two months after the top federal auto safety agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said it saw no need to require them because automakers are adding them voluntarily to more models.
Flight data recorders, which despite the black box characterization are bright orange, are aboard all commercial aircraft. They can collect more than a thousand pieces of data about an airliner that investigators can review to determine the cause of a crash.
Proponents of black boxes in passenger vehicles say they could provide investigators with an exhaustive database that could highlight flaws in auto and road designs.
Critics worry about who would get access to that information. Privacy advocate David Sobel said millions of drivers on the road now have no idea that their vehicles are collecting data.
"They certainly don't know what's being collected, how long it's being retained and who can get access to it under what circumstances," said Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
AAA, the nation's largest auto club, would support requiring black boxes only if protections were in place to ensure the data are used just for safety research and can't be traced to specific drivers, spokesman Mantill Williams said.
The highway safety agency says between 65 percent and 90 percent of 2004 vehicles have some sort of recording ability. About 15 percent of vehicles have data recorders. Different models collect different amounts of data. Some record nothing more than how fast a vehicle sped up or slowed down, while others collect a range of information about the driver's actions and the condition of a vehicle's mechanical systems.
Data have been used by the highway safety agency in safety research and by law enforcement officials investigating car crashes.
In Massachusetts, crash data have been used to bolster evidence in several prosecutions. And in California, a law took effect on July 1 that requires manufacturers to tell buyers when their new cars have black boxes. In most cases, the law requires an owner's permission before authorities can get access to the data.
The NTSB has the power only to investigate and recommend. Any requirements would have to be imposed by NHTSA.
The highway safety agency said in June that requiring black boxes was unnecessary but proposed that by 2008 the auto industry should outfit their vehicles voluntarily with recorders that would collect 42 pieces of accident data, including speed, braking, seat belt use and the time required for air bags to deploy.
The NTSB said black boxes could help explain accidents caused by "unintended acceleration" in which a vehicle suddenly speeds up. This can be caused by a driver sitting in the wrong position or mistakenly stepping on the accelerator rather than the brake, as the NTSB contends the Santa Monica driver did.
Those who believe older drivers should have to prove their driving ability cited the accident as an example of the tragedy that can result when people are too old to drive safely. The safety board could not determine whether Weller's age played a role in the accident, focusing instead on the need for stronger barriers at regularly recurring outdoor events such as street fairs and farmers markets.
Engleman Conners said the safety board maintains its interest in the issue of older drivers. The board decided to send an investigation team to Santa Monica because it hoped to learn whether the driver's age contributed to the accident.

Major Web sites hit with suit over gambling ads

Some gambling ads on Google, Yahoo and other major Web sites are illegal in California, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
The 60-page filing, presented in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that the companies sell rights to Web advertisements based on searches for terms such as "illegal gambling," "Internet gambling" and "California gambling."
The online businesses also use geotracking software to target particular regions, including California, for illegal gambling ads, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit demands that the companies stop accepting the advertisements and give California "millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains," said attorney Ira Rothken, one of several attorneys from firms involved in the class-action lawsuit.
The suit is the latest to involve Internet gambling, which has become a multibillion-dollar-a-year business and is usually focused on online poker or blackjack. Wireless interests, including European cell phone service providers, also offer gambling opportunities to their subscribers.
Yahoo and Google, in turn, rake in a majority of the millions of dollars gambling firms spend on advertising, according to the lawsuit. Representatives from the two companies did not return a call seeking comment.
In all, about a dozen high-profile Web companies are named as defendants. Included among them is CNET Networks, publisher of News.com.

Military readies directed-energy weapons

(AP) -- A few months from now, Peter Anthony Schlesinger hopes to zap a laser beam at a couple of chickens or other animals in a cage a few dozen yards away.
If all goes as planned, the chickens will be frozen in mid-cluck, their leg and wing muscles paralyzed by an electrical charge created by the beam, even as their heart and lungs function normally.
Among those most interested in the outcome will be officials at the Pentagon, who helped fund Schlesinger's work and are looking at this type of device to do a lot more than just zap a chicken.
Devices like these, known as directed-energy weapons, could be used to fight wars in coming years.
"When you can do things at the speed of light, all sorts of new capabilities are there," said Delores Etter, a former undersecretary of defense for science and technology and an advocate of directed-energy weapons.
Directed energy could bring numerous advantages to the battlefield in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have had to deal with hostile but unarmed crowds as well as dangerous insurgents.
Aside from paralyzing potential attackers or noncombatants like a long-range stun gun, directed-energy weapons could fry the electronics of missiles and roadside bombs, developers say, or even disable a vehicle in a high-speed chase.
The most ambitious program is the Air Force's Airborne Laser, a plan to mount a laser on a modified Boeing 747 and use it to shoot down missiles.
At the same Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico, researchers working with Raytheon Co. have developed a weapon called the Active Denial System, which repels adversaries by heating the water molecules in their skin with microwave energy. The pain is so great that people flee immediately.
"It just feels like your skin is on fire," said Rich Garcia, a spokesman for the laboratory who, as a test subject, has felt the Active Denial System's heat. "When you get out of the path of the beam, or shut off the beam, everything goes back to normal. There's no residual pain."
A Humvee-mounted Active Denial weapon is expected to be given to all services by the end of this year for evaluation, with a decision about deployment expected by the end of 2005.
But the idea of using directed energy against humans is creating debate fueled by deaths allegedly caused by Taser stun guns and the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners -- which put the military's respect for human rights under a microscope.
Some experts believe the use of directed energy will be limited by international law and treaties.
"Although it seems like it would be more desirable to disable rather than to kill them, the problem is there are all sorts of treaties in place that limit how you can disable noncombatants," said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a defense think tank. "It's kind of perverse, but sometimes the backlog of old laws can get in the way of being humane."
Military officials believe the intended uses of the Active Denial System do not violate any international laws or treaties and do not cause any permanent health problems.
"You can rest assured that with this system, when it finally is deployed, we will be very, very clear about what the intended uses are and what is clearly outside of bounds," said Marine Corps Capt. Daniel McSweeney, spokesman for the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. "It's not intended to be used as a torture device. That goes against all the design intentions and parameters."
Research into side effects of weaponized directed energy began in the late 1990s at the Air Force's Brooks City-Base in San Antonio. Researchers began by reviewing studies of radio-frequency energy involved in military communications, radar and other technologies, officials say.
Human testing of the Active Denial System began after researchers concluded it could be used without permanent harm. More than 200 volunteers -- including some in their 70s -- from various military branches and government agencies were zapped with the system, on average about three times each.
The results showed no lingering health problems, officials say.
"This type of device doesn't penetrate very far," said Lt. Col. William Roach, chief of the radio frequency branch of the Air Force Research Laboratory.
But the fact that studies on directed energy's human effects haven't been released to the public has some outside the government worried.
Dominique Loye of the International Committee of the Red Cross has pleaded for more disclosure of directed-energy research and independent investigation into possible side effects.
Directed energy may cause "new types of injuries we're not aware of and may not be capable of taking care of," Loye said. "The message we try to put across is: 'We understand some companies are investing money, so maybe it will be worthwhile for you to start the investigation as early as possible and not to invest millions and millions and then 10 years down the line find out your weapon will be illegal."'
The weapons' developers, on the other hand, pitch them for their lifesaving potential.
The pinpoint accuracy of a laser could eliminate collateral damage caused by missile explosions, the argument goes, and stun gun-like weapons could save lives in hostage or bomb-threat situations. Directed energy also has the potential to explode roadside bombs or mines from a distance.
"You're dealing with the ability to pre-detonate the majority of improvised explosives that are used right now," said Pete Bitar, president of Xtreme Alternative Defense Systems, an Anderson, Ind., company that is developing a rifle-sized directed-energy gun for the Marines.
The device works by creating an electrical charge through a stream of ionized gas, or plasma.
Bitar says it could be tuned to target the electronics of a vehicle or explosive device, or tuned to temporarily paralyze voluntary muscles, such as those that control arms and legs. The involuntary muscles, like heart and lungs, operate at a different frequency.
So far, this and a handful of similar weapons are only in the prototype stage. Production models, if approved by the military, would not be ready for a few years.
The device being developed by Schlesinger's company, HSV Technologies Inc. of San Diego, will operate similarly to Bitar's, except the electrical charge will be created by an ultraviolet laser beam, rather than plasma. He, too, says the device is designed for non-lethal purposes only.
"Later on, as certain agencies or law enforcement gets involved in this, and they see the need for lethality, I'm sure that can be developed later," Schlesinger said. "It could induce cardiac arrest, for example. But that is not our patent, and not our intent."
Still, that potential is sure to make opponents of directed energy skeptical.
"It's encouraging that the U.S. is searching for more humane weapons," said the Lexington Institute's Thompson. "But it's very hard to convince other countries that our goals are ethical."

Sheriff misusing FBI computer can't be sued

A federal appeals court said this week that the sheriff of Shawnee County, Kan., could not be sued for snooping through an FBI database for dirt on political enemies.
The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said Tuesday that David Meneley, who was sheriff until being ousted by the state on unrelated corruption charges, was immune from a civil lawsuit filed by Kansas residents he surreptitiously investigated through the FBI's Interstate Identification Index (III). Meneley was hoping to discredit local activists who had organized a petition drive in March 1999 to remove him from office.
Although the judges said they "strongly disapprove" of Meneley's actions, the appeals court concluded the former sheriff could not be sued on charges of violating the activists' First Amendment rights. There's no evidence that "their constitutional rights have been violated," the court said.
Meneley had typed the activists' names into the III, which provides state and local police with access to criminal history information in the FBI's National Crime Information Center network. The database includes records of anyone arrested for felonies or serious misdemeanors, a total of 50.5 million people as of December 2003.
In defending the federal lawsuit brought by activists Janet Price, Patricia McClellan and Kenneth Eaton, Meneley's lawyer argued that his client could not be sued because as a government official he enjoyed "qualified immunity" from lawsuits. Qualified immunity shields officials unless their conduct clearly violates rights protected by the U.S. Constitution or by law.
The appeals court agreed, saying the activists' First Amendment rights to express their views were not hindered: "Our case law recognizes that the nature of political debate is rough and tumble. Plaintiffs in public debates are expected to cure most misperceptions about themselves through their own speech and debate."
Meneley, who was first elected in November 1992, never did find any incriminating information about the people behind the recall petition.
He had claimed that he was acting on a tip about the background of petition sponsors, but could not produce notes or any other documentation to support that claim. After news leaked about Meneley's database accesses, some of the activists bailed out of the petition effort, and the recall movement ended with only about 15,000 signatures. At least 29,000 were necessary.
Federal law says that criminal history record information is supposed to be used only "for national security or criminal justice purposes authorized by law."
Eventually, in April 2001, the Kansas Supreme Court ousted Meneley after the state attorney general sued on charges of "willful misconduct in office." The trial court concluded Meneley had committed perjury and lied about a deputy who was stealing drugs seized as evidence, and the high court upheld the decision.

< This sheriff obviously did wrong, but how? Let's examine the issue.

While it's easy to see that he's wrong, it's not so easy to see why. The obvious reason, that the victims privacy was invaded, shoots directly to the heart of a constitutional issue, that privacy is a right. However!, When you're in the public eye, particularly when you're doing political things, that right is suspended in so far as it relates to those activities. In that our villian is found not guilty.

Ahh, but what about why he did it? Regardless of the reason, their privacy is not protected in these events, However!, and this is where the courts went wrong... The sheriff did not make the results available for public inspection even though the results were of public interest. Had he done so, it would still be debateable whether he had just cause to investigate them in the first place, his word, no evidence, but given that he Didn't, he was clearly using government property (paid for by us and those he investigated) for his own personal gain. For a court to say this is ok for what every technicality reason, is absurd. &gt